What Changes?

When we look around us, it’s not hard to notice that everything changes. People come and go. That nice forest is now condos. Mountains slowly crumble into the sea.

But what is it that’s changing? People may tell us that the world is relative and changeable. The truth is only found within. That’s the only place we’ll find what is unchanging, permanent.

Well – that is true. At one point. When we begin our spiritual journey, it’s usually by going within that we’ll meet ourselves. This is where we’ll find peace and happiness rather than in the changing world “out there”. However, we may still get tastes of beauty and peace in and of the world.

We’ll also have people tell us (including me) that the world is like a movie screen. That consciousness is not an effect of brain function but rather the brain is an effect of consciousness. (laughs) That consciousness projects the world out from itself.

The world is like a kind of waking dream. This is why they describe enlightenment as waking up. We wake up from this dream. But that’s not the whole truth either.

When we discover that peace inside, it gradually deepens until it starts to move forward into the world. Kind of like stepping down through the purushas. Then we discover that the screen of our projections – the apparent world – is ourselves as well. There is no “inside” and “outside”, just observing observing itself.

We see the dream, then we see it is our dream, then we see the dream is in us. Finally, even the dream itself does not change. It’s not a dream at all. It’s a remembering. Remembering who we are.

What is it then that is changing? How is it things seem to change if it’s all part of the unchanging? What changes is perception. Attention is moving within itself, in memory.